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Saturday, April 2, 2011

This week we finished Week 27 of Adventures in My Father's World. Or as I like to call it, the week with all the redos! ;)

In history this week, we learned that Minnesota and Oregon were the next two states added to the union.

Typically Hannah just does her state sheet and map work and we consider the state "done," but this week something on the state sheet piqued her curiosity and she wanted to look into it more. She read that Crater Lake in Oregon is an old volcano with a collapsed top, and she immediately wanted to see a picture of it. She googled it and found these breath-taking images!

What a beautiful place! I'm glad she took the time to look it up and "see" another part of our country that we had never seen before.

We were really surprised to see our U.S. map at the end of the week. I knew that California was added kind of "out of order" geographically because of the Gold Rush, but then I assumed we'd go back to working our way westward. But with the addition of Oregon, we realized that's not the way it worked after all.

In Bible this week we continued to look at Jesus as a Servant. One of my favorite days was when we read Matthew 25:31-46. In this passage, Jesus separates the sheep from the goats and blesses the sheep for giving Him food when he was hungry, something to drink when he was thirsty, and clothing and shelter when he was in need. They question this and tell Him they don't remember ever giving Him any of these things, and he replies, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." After we finished reading the passage, I shared an idea with the girls that I got from my friend Rose. (And yes, she is every bit as sweet as her name implies!)

You know how sometimes you see a person on a street corner with a "HUNGRY" sign but you don't know what to do as far as giving them money or not giving them money? Well, Rose has special bags made up for just such an occasion. So after school was finished for the day, the girls and I headed to Dollar Tree and bought enough supplies to make three "Blessing Bags." By the time we were all done adding to them, they had all kinds of goodies in them!

Each bag contains a tuna fish meal, two packages of peanut butter crackers, an applesauce and a spoon, peanuts, two bottles of water, a toothbrush, a toothbrush case, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, a washcloth, deodorant, socks, eight wet wipes, a bag to hold all the toiletry items, and a Bible.

We had such a good time shopping for these bags and putting them all together! They're currently in the trunk, ready to be shared with whoever the Lord might put in our path who has a need for one.

We also made plans to help the family of a student-athlete Greg occasionally takes home from school, but when we shared our ideas with him at dinner, he had a few reservations. He's still praying about that one so he can make a good decision for both our family and the student's family.

In science we looked at how matter can change from one state (liquid, solid, gas) to another, such as when a candle melts or when water boils.

We talked about the way water expands when it freezes, unlike most materials which shrink when they get colder. To demonstrate this, we filled a plastic container with water and placed it in the freezer. The book suggested using a water bottle, but we didn't have one handy that day so we tried using a Tupperware type of container instead. Didn't work out so well. ;)

Here's our container filled to the brim.

This is what it looked like when it came out.

We could sorta-kinda-maybe tell that it had expanded, but it also had some low spots in it. Soooo ...

Mama declared a redo.

Fortunately, Greg brought a water bottle home from work the next day and we were able to do the experiment the way the directions said to do it, with much better results. (Funny how that happens!) ;)

Here's our bottle of water, filled to the brim and ready to place in the freezer.

And here it is a full day later. Sure enough, the water expanded as it froze, forcing its way out of the top of the bottle.

We learned that insulated items hold in heat and cold better than non-insulated items. To demonstrate this, we wrapped one coffee mug in cotton and left one unwrapped. Then we put an ice cube in each mug. The book said the ice cube in the wrapped mug would melt more slowly because it was insulated. The book was wrong.

Here's Hannah putting the plastic wrap on both mugs.

Each mug has an ice cube. (The mug on the left is the insulated one.)

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And here they are about six minutes later. Whaaaaat?!

﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿So you know what Mama did?

Mama declared a redo.

The mugs we used the first time weren't identical, so one of them could have offered better insulation just because it was a better mug. So to make everything fair, we decided just to use identical juice glasses instead. And the other thing we did differently the second time 'round was to wrap the heck out of the insulated cup. None of this "wrap it once and we're done" business!

Ready to give it another try!

Yessss! This time it worked!

Okay, fine. Maybe the book was right after all. ;)

And for our final activity, we placed a variety of substances in the freezer to see if the freezing temperatures had the same effect on all of them. I got out an ice cube tray and had the girls choose items from the fridge and pantry. The only one I was dead set on doing was hair conditioner. I didn't think it would freeze, but I did think it would be interesting to see for sure.
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The strawberry syrup never froze! (This is the kind of strawberry syrup you mix with milk or squeeze onto ice cream.)

The chocolate syrup was thicker than normal, but it hadn't frozen, either.

The substances with the toothpicks in them were the ones that weren't frozen solid.

The ones that surprised us the most were the vegetable oil, which had a lotion-like consistency; the hair conditioner, which actually froze solid; and the grape jelly, which didn't change much from the way it was when we put in it!

In math this week, we transitioned from multiplication to division. This lent itself to an especially funny life lesson earlier today. Last night we had some friends' kids over for dinner, and we had Oreos for dessert. After lunch today, Hannah asked if she could have some Oreos for dessert. I told her, "There are two left. You can have one of them." That little stinker's first thought was that Greg and I had stayed up late and eaten all of them except for two! I reminded her that there were three extra people here for dinner last night, and when you divide a package of Oreos between 7 people rather than between 4, you don't get as many of them. She got it, but she wasn't very happy about it.

And in grammar, we wrapped up our unit on paragraphs. Hannah has been learning how to think of experiences in terms of how they look, sound, and feel, then put those senses into words so others can share her experience. Her assignment was to write about an experience, making sure to include sentences that told what she saw, heard, and felt. This is what she came up with:

"This morning I saw Millie. She had blond hair. She neighs like a horse. Her hair is tangly."

I told her that all the sentences in her paragraph needed to talk about one topic, and she felt like they did because they all talked about Millie. I tried to point out that they didn't all talk about the same aspect of Millie because they jumped back and forth from her hair to the way she neighs like a horse (which, by the way ... what?!) to her tangly hair. I told Hannah to find one experience with Millie to write about, and she chose to write about what it's like to wake up with Millie in the morning. Here is her finished product:

"This morning I saw Millie. She has a pretty smile in the morning. I can hear her yawn. I can feel the warmth of her when she hugs me!"

That, I can accept.

And speaking of Millie, here are a couple of pictures of her working on one of her lessons this week.

Complete and utter cuteness, this child is!

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For this part of her lesson, she draws a number card ...

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... looks at it ...

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... then writes the number and adds that many stickers or stamps to her paper.

The actual lessons are written to have your child choose an object and draw it that many times (whatever number card they choose), but who wants to draw 13 of something?! Every now and then she'll choose to draw 10 flowers or 5 swings or something, but we have found the stickers and stamps to be a faster and easier way to accomplish the same thing.

And finally, how about a little nature study nugget? Earlier today the kids ran in to tell me they found something sooo exciting outside. And it was pretty cool. It was a white frog!
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Here it is in their frog habitat.

﻿﻿After a few minutes it began to look a little darker. I didn't know frogs could change color to blend with their surroundings?!

She said it was even darker in the first picture than it was when they first found it, but I can't verify the accuracy of that statement. I'm simply reporting what I was told. ;)

The plan was to watch it throughout the day and see if it changed colors anymore, but sadly our nature study went in a totally different direction. We learned instead that you can't keep a frog in a habitat in the direct sunlight or things don't work out so well for the frog.

8 comments:

Ha ha! I am up way too late and literally laughing out loud about your poor frog! Ok, what an awesome, awesome week you guys had. I love your bags that you put together- just a perfect project. Forget all the "re-dos" I'll just be happy to do half of what y'all got done!! Great week!

We go go Oregon all the time...and we go to Crater Lake all the time. I've been there 4 times...once, it was snowing so much, we couldn't see ANYTHING in front of us...including the lake. The drifts were 12' high and it was below zero in temperature. COLD! Anyway, the lake is gorgeous!!! The color of it is breathtaking. I actually mobiled around it one time. Wow!

I loved, loved, loved your post. It is nice to have a computer again. I will have to catch up on your other posts.

I say it all the time but I will say it again, "I love your homeschool! Your children are so blessed to have you as their mom and teacher."

We are planning to go to Oregon next month. If it works out I want to see that lake.

Leah finished her K and is proud to be a 1st grader. I'm not going to start her curriculum until next fall. I will just have her read, read, read. I wish I would have thought about the sticker idea! She got tired of drawing. Who wants to draw 25 things? I would just tell her to draw circles or something easy.